Now that we have the structure of Santa Cruz County and municipal governance well in hand in previous posts, HERE and HERE, and the natural laws that constrain human population and economic growth HERE, how do we visualize and reorganize governance in the Santa Cruz Bioregion to build a democratic, ecological society supportive of all life in the Natural World?
We learn, from infancy to adulthood, that humans are intimately, inescapably an interdependent part of the natural world. We learn that we cannot pretend we can continue to over-consume the resources required by all life, forcing the non-human inhabitants into homelessness.
We make ecology and conservation key components of education from Kindergarten to degreed education, so as to include consideration for the health and well being of the natural world in all policies and programs in government and industry. We break the stranglehold of corporate capitalism on popular culture, government and the economy.
We wrestle to the ground and hog tie corporate advertising that promotes continuous economic growth and consumption, that celebrates high human birth rates, that diminishes the perception of sufficiency and adequacy and promotes profligacy, greed and avarice as central social values.
We change our form of governance, de-emphasize personality politics, and rebuild democracy in place of corporate oligarchy, authoritarianism, and centralization of political power. We build political power from the bottom up through a network of neighborhood and craft assemblies as the basis for local political organization.
Grass roots local governance
A recent article in Yavor Tarinski’s outstanding blog echos my thoughts about neighborhood assemblies based on environmental understanding as part of ecological governance at the bioregional level:
“The basis on which such democratic and ecological cities should be built is a process of constant popular self-institution. In other words, this implies the collective creation of participatory decision-making bodies, through which the citizens to be able directly to shape the laws and rules of their common urban habitat.
The political foundations of our cities then, could be based not on centralized bureaucratic mechanism, but on networks of popular assemblies. These bodies will be the main locus of power, through which the citizens will shape the common framework of policies and laws to which all urban dwellers should abide to.”
I’ve written about neighborhood assemblies extensively on We Live in the Natural World: HERE and HERE for example. This is the ultimate answer to reviving democracy in our own communities, urban and rural. It’s not a popular idea with government representatives and paid staff, nor with non-profits and corporate industry whose livelihoods depend on easy access to centralized authority to do their bidding.
Organizing our political world from the grass roots instead of top down is the only effective path to bioregional governance that fosters conservation and protection of the natural world, for itself, not just for human use.
















